Special attacks will have extra text under them when you're looking at the combat predictions. Gotta pay attention to those whether in combat or sex combat, they can help a lot.
There are armor sets (Especially most the high tier armor) and weapons (Lady Buster) that protect you from ero stuff, there's also wine that gives you a frigid buff that does the same. You could even swap to one of the titles that boosts EP, and you'll eventually get some new defend actions from the succubi dreams that can restore EP during intimacy mode.
You can tell how dangerous a move is during intimacy mode if you read the text. Generally: Look < Hug < Kiss < Any kind of direct sex action like handjob, blowjob, thighjob, etc. Obviously you'll want to defend as best you can against the direct sex actions.
Most of the problem are from 2nd phase of Intimacy mode (Intercourse mode), so both items and combat prediction are out of option. In fact, as far as I know there aren't anyway to mitigate EP during Intimacy mode, but thank you anyway.
Perhaps I should explain it more clearly. As I said before, EP damage during Intimacy mode seem to scale off your maximum EP, so any form of investment in EP like stat points and titles doesn't work. EP restoring skills are great, but in the end it wasn't enough. Some counterattack are too heavy to recover from and some can outright one-shot you.
Sex stat doesn't seem to have any impact on Arousal/Anxiety in Intimacy mode. While 'Light attack' during the 2nd phase can be use to avoid deadly counter attack, they barely did anything to and increase Arousal/Anxiety (In fact, some of these action doesn't have any effect) and stalling for time by using these action can lead to heavy counter attack anyway. Defensive option during counter attack are also unreliable. Sometime they left you with 1 EP, but most of the time they don't.
Equipment with 'Recover EP' effect doesn't seem to do anything. It doesn't improve EP recovery rate or help regenerate EP.
Even 'Ero Res' and 'Intimacy master' equipment doesn't seem to have any clear effect on EP damage reduction.
So, anyway to defense from heavy counter attack in phase 2 or increase recovered EP? or increase damage on Arousal/Anxiety? I still haven't found any reliable way so far...